roadtrip

a moment of wedding crashing in the:

Happy B'day MP1

first official day of Spring Break and...

yours truly spent it in the ER.  I was furloughed on Friday, but I really have  to get the current exhibit finished before we come back from Spring Break, so I went in yesterday (Saturday) to make some progress in that direction. While I've had lots of really good help from students, one wall is/was just a mess of bad foamcore-trimming (sloppy cuts at hilariously bad angles).  Thus, I was reprinting and/or retrimming most of those interpretive panels so I could move along to entirely unfinished areas of the exhibit, when I sliced a long, deep, and truly disgusting cut in my index finger. You may remember that I did a similar, but less bloody thing to my thumb a couple years ago, while working on MGC's exhibit. Gah!!! My job is full of liabilities: one super nasty-tempered faculty member, climbing ladders that are 180 degrees straight up to lofts that were never meant to allow for walking (criss-crossed by low steel beams), and then this business of needing to wield x-acto knives on a regular basis. This show has more than 150 pieces of foam core to trim. Each one has 4 sides (some have more). You do the math. What a party.

Anyway, the good news is that at least it was me and not a student who sliced themselves up. Plus, the exhibit is coming along quite nicely (if somewhat beyond the deadline) and in 10 days I can go have these 6 stitches yanked out.  Many thanks to TH, who came up to campus to drive me to the ER, went back to the Museum with me to help me finish trimming and laying out some materials, then treated me to a great bowl of seafood gumbo at dinner with friends downtown. Today, I'm writing the intro panel and finishing up the fabrication and installation. Tomorrow, a road trip for MP1's birthday (yay!!) and then I have to buckle down and start working on a grant proposal (I'm actually looking forward to that).

And did I say yet that I'm very proud of my Museum class? I am.

to prove I'm still alive

As is usual for this time of the year, I am beyond overloaded with exhibit development, committee meetings, midterms, etc. I look longing at my colleagues who only show up to teach, complain because they have to come on campus more than 2 days a week (!!),  and serve on maybe one or two committees at the departmental level.  I want their jobs. While I'm neglecting this blog, I'm blogging almost daily at another site (and under a different pseudonym) that represents my latest experiment in holding students accountable to each other for group projects and lab hours. Each of them maintains a blog linked to my primary course blog on museum methods. I think it has been a pretty effective strategy for managing this class and project. Rented Life--I caught your recent post on group work via my RSS feed and wanted to respond; stay tuned and I'll go into more detail when I hit Spring break--I'm hoping to snare at least ONE day of that for something not entirely job-related!  I actually took this past Saturday off from work and have photos to prove it.

Captions top to bottom:
1)We promised MP1 a new cello case maybe two Xmas ago and she finally found the one she wanted (BAM).
2) Blossom in the un-named strings store parking lot
3) Lunch view! Note to self--must find beach or bay house!

waiting game

I am waiting for a high school student from the foothills to interview me by phone about "my career." I originally agreed to do this in person, on campus, during the work-week. Then yesterday, she changed her story to "well, I can't come down before the assignment is due Monday (hello? you contacted me on Thursday), so how about by phone this weekend?"  Gah! I agreed to this (because I am crazy),  but only if it happened on Saturday morning at a time I emailed back to her. She wrote last night that she would call at that time and thanked me profusely. Yet here I sit, and she is 7 minutes late calling already. How she got my name is beyond me.

I am also working on exhibit-related graphics this morning. This tag (below) was in a group I scanned yesterday for my students to use. I am not yet sure that it relates to the collection we are working with, but it is--by far--my favorite. I think it dates to late 19th century. Isn't it cool? As always, you can click on the image to enlarge.